Based on true events.
“Severance” is about Joseph, 20, a young man who is about to experience his ultimate test of faith with serious consequences.

If you think you fit the role of:

JOSEPH, early 20s, Chinese male, able to speak English and a little mandarin. An innocent and naive young man.

LUKE, early 20s, Chinese male, able to speak English and a little mandarin. A good friend of Joseph

MATTHEW, 30s, Chinese male, able to speak English and a little mandarin. A charming and influential man who is also a mentor to both Joseph and Luke.

MOM, around 40 to 50, Chinese female, able to speak Mandarin and a little English. Joseph’s mother who’s husband just passed away.

Acting experience is not a must. Just be yourself.

When:  4th December 2010

Where: 33 Kerbau Road, Room K2.
Singapore 219166
(Nearest mrt: Little India)

Time:   From 11am to 7pm.

For more info. pls email: severanceshortfilm@gmail.com

For more information on how you can purchase the tickets please visit the website below:
http://www.filmfest.org.sg/displayFilm.php?filmID=150&filmCat=12

“Respirator” will be premiering at this year’s 14th Pusan International Film Festival, 2009. Keep a look out for it if your at the festival this October.

South Korea is a great place to premiere and not to mention a lot of my favorite film makers are there too. 

And yes. This will mark the first time, any of my works has ever premiered at Pusan and hopefully this won’t be the last. 

Check out the link:

http://www.piff.org/eng/html/program/prog_view.asp?idx=14238&target=search&c_idx=16&sp_idx=sp5&m_entry_year=2009 

An overview of all the short films I have done so far. Brings back the old memories. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Best Regards,

Michael Tay

This is amazing. Just when I thought things are running cold for this work that has been traveling the festivals for more than a year already, I receive great news again that it recently won the Linda Mabalot New Directors/ New Visions Award at the 25th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2009.

Once again I would like to thank the Jury for this honour. This is my first award from a non-asian country and I am glad to hear that people else where are enjoying “Wet Season” as much as they do in Singapore. Thank you all once again for this.

Read about the awards and the festival from here.

Awards Won by “WET SEASON” to date:

25th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2009 -  Linda Mabalot New Directors/New Visions Award

12th Ismailia International Film Festival for Documentary & Short Films, 2008, Egypt – Best Film Prize in the Competition of Experimental Films.

3rd Jogja NETPAC Asian Film Festival, 2008, Indonesia – Best Short Film

21st Singapore International Film Festival, 2008, Singapore – Special Jury Prize

So now here is a sneak peak at my latest work, “Respirator”.

PS: Try watching this trailer on HD by clicking the HD icon at the lower screen of the video. The normal quality just sucks.

Synopsis:

“To save her 7 year old son from dying of a rare heart disease, a single mother undergoes a bizarre operation but recovers only to realize the terrifying consequences.”

From the look of things you guys can probably guess that this is very different from my previous works. It is also my longest short film to date. (Running at 19 mins)

Will be sending it out to festivals and will update you guys when it is screening. So keep a look out for it.

It’s fucking freezing there!!! That’s pretty much my one and only complaint about Sundance.

And the thing I love most about it; The people at Utah, Park City are simply the most friendliest people I ever met. They are the ones that truly warm me up.

Overall I would say the experience has been overwhelming and the audiences are very vocal and direct about what they watch. When the show is screening, they don’t text on their hand phones, they don’t talk and they don’t even bring food into the cinema. Absolutely attentive and simply lovely.

WET SEASON premiered at Sundance 09 at the Egyptian Theater in Main Street, Park City.  The theater is almost packed and the response has been very good so far. I am so glad that two Singaporeans who are staying around the area actually approached me after the screening and gave me their thanks and encouragement. It feels great knowing that your not alone after all.

Met a number of celebs during Sundance but never really get the chance to chat with them. I was too shy. Ha!

I was really moved by the speech Robert Redford gave to the film makers during the director’s brunch. “The times have always been bad, they have have never been worse. They have always been the same and they have always been good as well.”

This is Ewan Mcgregor at the top and Jim Carrey at the Sundance premiere of their gay film ” I Love You, Philip Morris “. A really funny and lovely movie. Keep a look out for it when it arrives.

According to the press, this year’s Sundance is more scaled down due to the recession but tickets are still selling fast, the queues are still long and theaters are still packed.

A great year for Sundance. I hope to come back next year. But till then, I gotta get back to my post production.

It is a great privilege and honor to be included in the DVD anthology Singapore Shorts Vol. 2.

It has been 3 years since the Asian Film Archive first released the Singapore Shorts DVD. This time with volume 2, the short films are selected with stories that revolve around the theme of family.

Notable Singaporean film maker’s like Boo Junfeng, Loo Zihan, K. Rajagopal and Brian Gothong Tan are also featured in this anthology.

For more info on the DVD and how to purchase it, please go to the official website:

http://www.asianfilmarchive.org/singapore_shorts2/

The DVD is now available in HMV, Books Kinokuniya and Citylink HMV.

A third win for “Wet Season” for the Best Film Prize in the Competition of Experimental Films at the 12th Ismailia Film Festival for Documentary and Short Films, Egypt, 2008.

I would like to thank the judges as well as audiences worldwide who have seen and enjoyed “Wet Season”. I thank you all for the support, the encouragement and I hope my works will continue to speak to your hearts and minds.

Thank you all for making this year a great one for me:)

Michael Tay

The Banishment review

In 1918, Russian film maker, Lev Kuleshov, discovered a montage effect called the Kuleshov effect. What happens is that he just records an actor who maintains the same expression, edits it with different random images and later screens it to audiences who will review it. Despite maintaining a stone and emotionless face, the audiences are able to interpret so many things from the actor’s “acting” and they give him the thumbs up for his performance.

Hence, is the effect of the Kuleshov effect and hence is the case for critically acclaim Russian film maker, Andrei Zvyagintsev, second film, The Banishment. The movie is about a husband who has to go through a moral dilemma of exacting “just” punishment on his wife who claimed that she is pregnant with a child that is not his.

Very much like his debut, The Return, his films always have an air of mystery and a heavy dose of biblical references. The film plays off almost like an observational piece. Always maintaining a distance away from the characters and the subject. A lot of emotions are seen from the back of the character’s head or from a side profile or from two blocks away. It leaves me to wonder if the film maker is really trying to pull off a Kuleshov from start to finish.

To those who are familiar with his 2003 debut, The Return, Andrei is a film maker that demonstrates that his prowess is in subtracting and withholding. He carefully chooses how he wants to take away or suppress a scene in order to engage the audience. Shooting the back of the actor’s head whenever the scene calls for a lot of attention on his expression is one such technique. And yes, I understand for some that this can also get frustrating.

What I really like about this film is how it cleverly manages to draw a parallel between a biblical story of Mary being pregnant with the son of God and a woman who faces impending doom for being pregnant with a dubious child. The film makes very brutal juxtaposition of the two and even dresses up a doctor who is performing an abortion to look like a priest.

It is easy to tell a film that appeals to festivals like Cannes. For one thing, they are never easy films because they don’t service the audience. They leave a lot for them to interpret and analyze. Hence, films that can give you a good topic for an essay are usually damn appealing to Cannes.

As much as Andrei is a good director, he has forgotten that by utilizing the Kuleshov effect too much doesn’t grant him a lot of recognition for his efforts. So it is no wonder, the Cannes only awarded this film with a best actor award.